his friends Dr. Fothergill and Dr. Pitcairn. Dr. Russell was a fellow of the Royal Society, and one of the early fellows of the Medical Society of London. His "Natural History of Aleppo" was translated into several European languages, and was afterwards published with considerable additions by his brother, Dr. Patrick Russell. Dr. Russell was the introducer into England of the Arbutus andrachne.—F. C. W.
* RUSSELL, John, first earl, secretary of state for foreign affairs, ex-premier of Great Britain, third and youngest son of the sixth duke of Bedford by his first wife, second daughter of the fourth Viscount Torrington, was born in Hertford Street, London, on the 18th of August, 1792. Receiving his earliest education at Sunbury and Westminster school, he was sent, like the marquis of Lansdowne and Lord Palmerston, in the first decade of the present century, to complete his culture at the university of Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Dugald Stewart and Dr. Thomas Brown. While in Edinburgh he resided with Professor Playfair, with whom he was on terms of great intimacy and friendship, and who had an important part in his education at that time. Lord John Russell entered parliament in 1813 as member for the family borough of Tavistock, and joined the liberal opposition. From that time he was identified with the "cause of civil and religious liberty," which had then comparatively few supporters in the house of commons, and his political biography includes the contemporary history of the whig party, of which he rose slowly but surely to be the leader. From an early period he saw that parliamentary reform was a condition precedent of the triumph of his political principles; and by repeated motions and efforts to procure instalments of it, and for long with almost as little encouragement out of doors as in the house of commons itself, he made that question peculiarly his own. How modest and tentative was necessarily the character of the demands in those days of even a zealous parliamentary reformer may be estimated, by a reference to the nature of the resolutions in favour of parliamentary reform which, in December, 1819, Lord John Russell submitted to the house of commons in an elaborate speech. He did not propose that boroughs, however small, should be disfranchised until they were proved to be thoroughly corrupt; then, and only then, he proposed that their quota of parliamentary representation should be transferred to unrepresented large towns or to counties imperfectly represented. In the same year was published Lord John Russell's first book, the "Life of Lord William Russell," a biography of his celebrated ancestor. It was followed in 1820 by "Essays and Sketches of Life and Character, by a gentleman who has left his lodgings;" in 1821, by an "Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution, from the reign of Henry VII. to the present time;" in 1822, by "Don Carlos, or Persecution, a tragedy, in five acts;" in 1824-29, by two elaborate quartos, "Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe, from the peace of Utrecht to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748;" and in 1828, by the "Establishment of the Turks in Europe; a historical discourse." Lord John Russell, we believe, once adventured in fiction, by publishing a novel or tale, the "Nun of Arrauca." Most of his serious compositions went through several editions, and all of them are distinguished by clearness and simplicity of style, and by a certain unaffected dignity. Meanwhile, through all difficulties and discouragements Lord John had been persistently fighting in the house of commons the battle of liberalism, until its final success became evidently merely a question of time. In 1826 he carried the second reading of a bill for the transfer of parliamentary representation from small boroughs to large towns. In 1828 he achieved a great and promising triumph, the repeal of the test acts, which imposed civil disabilities on protestant dissenters. Catholic emancipation being conceded by Peel and Wellington, parliamentary reform remained the great question of the time. So on the formation of Lord Grey's ministry, November, 1830, Lord John Russell was appointed paymaster of the forces—though without a seat in the cabinet—and one of the ministerial committee to which was intrusted the task of drawing up a measure of parliamentary reform. This, the celebrated reform bill, was introduced to the house of commons by Lord John Russell on the 1st of March, 1831. During the fifteen stormy months which intervened between its introduction and its passage into law (June, 1832), Lord John's firm attitude and parliamentary skill contributed not a little to its success. By the withdrawal of Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham, the accession of Sir Robert Peel to the premiership in 1834 found Lord John Russell the leader of the whig party in the lower house. It was he who brought forward the "appropriation clause," the success of which drove Sir Robert Peel from power. On the formation of Lord Melbourne's ministry (April, 1835), Lord John Russell received the high office of secretary for the home department, and became leader of the house of commons. As home secretary he introduced and succeeded, despite formidable opposition, in carrying the municipal corporation bill. In August, 1839, he exchanged the home for the colonial secretaryship, which he retained until the resignation of the Melbourne ministry in September, 1841. Leader of the opposition during Sir Robert Peel's second premiership. Lord John Russell was chosen one of the members for the city of London at the general election of 1841, having represented Tavistock from 1813 to 1819, Huntingdonshire from 1820 to 1826, Bandon from 1826 to 1830, Devon from 1831 to 1834, and Stroud from 1834 to 1841. In the autumn of 1845 Lord John Russell announced in a letter from Edinburgh to his London constituents, that in his opinion the time had come for the total repeal of the corn-laws. This letter hastened Sir Robert Peel's conversion to repeal; and when Sir Robert soon afterwards resigned, rather than remain in office with the corn-laws unrepealed, it was Lord John who this time was summoned to form an administration. His efforts failed through the disinclination of Lord Grey to enter the cabinet with Lord Palmerston as secretary for foreign affairs, and Sir Robert Peel, resuming office, repealed the corn-laws with the aid of the whigs. Defeated on the Irish coercion bill Sir Robert Peel again resigned, July, 1846, and again Lord John Russell was summoned to form a ministry, an enterprise in which he this time succeeded. The Russell administration repealed the navigation laws, appointed the royal commissions which arranged the details of university reform, and carried the ecclesiastical titles act, the key-note of which was first sounded by Lord John Russell in his celebrated Durham letter, November 4, 1850. Defeated, February 20, 1851, by a section of his own supporters who voted for Mr. Locke King's proposal to extend the £10 franchise to counties. Lord John Russell resigned, but quickly returned (March 3) to office. Lord Derby not being prepared to form a ministry. In the following December Lord Palmerston (q.v.) ceased to be foreign secretary, and in February, 1851, the militia bill of the government having been essentially modified by the house of commons at the instance of Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell and his colleagues resigned, and were succeeded by the first Derby administration. On the formation of the coalition-ministry of Lord Aberdeen, Lord John Russell entered it as secretary for foreign affairs (December, 1852), with the leadership of the house of commons. From February, 1853, to June, 1854, he was a member of the cabinet without office; and on the 13th of February in the latter year he introduced a new reform bill, which was withdrawn in the excitement caused by the Russian war. He was lord-president of the council from June, 1854, to January, 1855, withdrawing from the ministry just before the introduction of Mr. Roebuck's motion for a select committee to inquire into the state of the army before Sebastopol, a motion which Lord John Russell avowed himself unable conscientiously to oppose. He was appointed in the following month representative of Great Britain at the conferences of Vienna, and after his return was colonial secretary from May to July, 1855. An outcry was raised, because at the conferences of Vienna he had supported the Austrian compromise for establishing a naval counterpoise to the power of Russia in the Black Sea—a compromise which was also supported by the representative of France, M. Drouyn de l'Huys. Lord John Russell resigned. His subsequent parliamentary policy is sketched in the memoir of Lord Palmerston. In June, 1859, he became foreign secretary on the formation of Lord Palmerston's second ministry, and in July, 1861, was raised to the peerage as Earl Russell of Kingston-Russell, in the county of Dorset, having continued to represent the city of London in the house of commons since his first election in 1851. Besides the works already mentioned. Earl Russell is the author of the "Causes of the French Revolution," 1832, and of the "Life and Times of Charles James Fox," 1859. He has also edited the Correspondence of John Duke of Bedford, 1843, and Memorials of Charles James Fox. Earl Russell has been twice married—in 1835 to the relict of the second Lord Ribblesdale, eldest daughter of Thomas Lister, Esq. of Armytage Park; she died in 1838; and in 1841, to Lady Frances Anna Maria, daughter of the earl of Minto.—F. E.
